Lesine Woodson, 32; James Felix, 36; Brandon Sanders, 18; and Johnny Ford, 32, are all in custody, according to Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo.
Cops say Felix, Sanders and Ford attacked Hampton just before 3 p.m. Tuesday at 235 North Willard Street, where Hampton was completing a drug deal. Hampton and his attackers exchanged gunfire, and Hampton was fatally shot in the head, authorities said. The attackers fled in a vehicle driven by Woodson.
Sanders fled to Connecticut with Ford, police said. A Connecticut SWAT team apprehended Ford at a Motel 6 in Enfield, where police recovered $16,000 in cash and more than 100 grams of crack cocaine. Hampton had a “quantity” of crack cocaine when he was killed, police said.
Police learned Ford had gone to the MGM Springfield Casino in Springfield, Mass., and played poker after the murder. He has previous arrests in Florida for robbery, aggravated battery, carrying a concealed weapon and various drug charges. Sanders also has a record for robbery and larceny, police said.
Del Pozo said the altercation sprayed bullets around a residential neighborhood just as school was letting out, and that it was fortunate no bystanders were shot.
Hampton, the victim, is also from Florida. In January, he led troopers on a 30-mile pursuit at speeds over 100 mph. He was eventually apprehended by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy in Essex.
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While I agree diversity as a whole is a good thing, yet, it is also a double edged sword.
It is no accident that Vermont’s prison population is disproportionately black.
Usually for drug dealing, possession of a gun
Or murder.
4 days from the article to get a juicy racist comment; not bad, Seven Days readers.
You’re right that it’s not an accident, though. Instead, it’s the result of entrenched institutional racism and the implicit and explicit biases of individuals. These four people are criminals, but it has nothing to do with the color of their skin – it has to do with their possession of cocaine, guns, and propensity to murder or assist in a murder. White people have those things, too, Chuck.
There has been a lot of talk about so-called “implicit bias” recently. This idea is brilliant in a TED Talk kind of way and has an intuitive attraction in seemingly trying to explain certain phenomenon in society. However, would encourage anyone to investigate the science behind “implicit bias.” It turns out there is no scientific basis for this theory. It is neither scientifically valid nor scientifically reliable. Validity in the scientific context means does the test actually test for what it purports to? I.e., does the implicit bias test actually test for implicit bias? Or is it just testing reflexes, vision, hand-eye coordination, etc? And reliability means are the test results replicable? When the same person takes the same test a 2nd and 3rd time, the test results should be the same or almost identical. This has not been the case. The scientific community is well aware of this, as well as the original theorists behind “implicit bias.” They have tried to acknowledge the serious limitations and it was just a theory.
More likely there is still plenty of explicit bias from people of all stripes because it is considered to be hard-wired into the human species over tens of thousands of years.
I respect the good faith of the original commenter but I disagree with the sentiment expressed therein. We are now well over 50 years past the Civil Rights Act. Passed before most everyone in Generation X was born (and certainly anyone younger). We should be judging each human being as an individual, based on their own individual actions. Doesn’t matter race, gender, religion, etc. Stereotyping and racial profiling, whether it is in college admissions or police traffic stops, is wrong. In general, the last few years seem to have seen a big rise in judging people based solely on their immutable characteristics (including from all sides of the political spectrum). Just silly that we are in 2019 and people are still making broad categorizations based on the amount of melanin someone is born with (or sometimes in other cases based on the chromosomes someone receives during their mother’s pregnancy). How someone conducts themselves is what matters, as an individual human being.
Chris, the test (presumably you mean the IAT) might not be reliable, but there is a lot of evidence that implicit bias exists. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article…
@some of us are sometimes right, interesting article. Thanks for the link.
Yes, I was talking about the IAT. And not only is it not scientifically reliable, it is not even clear it is scientifically valid. I.e., that it tests for what it purports to. And yet policy-makers, human resources departments, college orientation sessions, etc. are now starting to take actions based on this theory. I am curious as to whether examples they suggest are actually result of implicit bias (vs, in fact, explicit bias). They acknowledge every implicit bias test & study has its limitations. But then say that b/c one can’t consider any single test because of limitations, instead look at all tests together as a whole and that will then prove implicit bias (even though each of these given tests does not prove anything by itself).
Perhaps it is just matter of semantics since real world consequences what they are. They all agree real world discrimination continues. However, these broad average results about job application call-backs; professor response rate; physician prescription-writing, etc. may well be more about explicit bias. Certainly good to be aware so everyone can best treat each person as individual human being. But simultaneously normal for people to have bias because of evolution. Whether it is Han Chinese toward non-Han Chinese; Japanese toward non-Japanese; North Africans toward non-North Africans; etc. NYT did article on Indian immigrants in US who choose to retire to all-Indian retirement communities in FL, etc. Everyone has bias. Things can always improve but diverse USA continues to be attractive to many immigrants.